Sarah Marin, a 7th-grade English teacher at Hildebrandt Intermediate School, assigns all of her students an end-of-year research project where they present on a country of their choice. This year, she gave her students the option to use Swivl’s MirrorTalk to complete verbal project reflections. In previous years, she had her students complete their written reflections. In Sarah’s final tally, 59 of her students chose to complete their reflections with MirrorTalk instead. 

Sarah found that introducing MirrorTalk integrated seamlessly within her classroom assessment dynamic. Most of her students are 12, going on 13, and grew up being comfortable with technology, so they immediately gravitated toward reflection with MirrorTalk. Even students who typically struggle to focus quickly grasped how to use MirrorTalk.  For one of her neurodivergent students in particular, MirrorTalk gave them an immediate confidence boost. Throughout the year, her student had struggled with focus and comprehension in other exercises. While using MirrorTalk, however, this student took the initiative and easily guided themselves through completing the assignment. Her student intuitively understood the reflection’s workflow when presented through MirrorTalk, and stayed focused on the objective throughout the reflection prompts.

Better student outcomes

Sarah loved that her students who chose to complete their reflections with MirrorTalk answered with full fidelity. “It forced them to truly articulate how they had felt about the project,” Sarah explained. “Not having to talk to a teacher and feel judged really enabled my students to open up and use their metacognitive abilities.” 

Reflecting aloud prepared the students for a follow-up reflection discussion. “I noticed that some of the kids who did MirrorTalk first did a better job on their overall reflection because they had already had to put their thoughts into words. It helped some of my students think more deeply about things they had struggled with, making it easier to convey their thoughts in writing.”

Those new dimensions of candor, gleaned through the Dashboard, provided Sarah with new insights into how she could support each student for the rest of the school year and how to structure the project for better results next year.

Sarah plans to continue using MirrorTalk, seeing applications for self-reflection for next year. She is looking forward to using it at the beginning of the school year to measure each student’s comprehension. Sarah is confident she can use MirrorTalk to individually support each of her students more quickly.

Read more about how Klein ISD educators are using MirrorTalk

• Kleb Intermediate School –  Instructional Specialist in Digital Learning, Kim Sharp, introduces MirrorTalk with her co-teaching partner, Christy Stewart, to their Advanced Humanities class.
• Klein ISD –  Monica Shallenberger, the Director of Professional Learning for the Klein Independent School District, uses MirrorTalk to support her teachers amidst stringent state budgets. 

Learn more!

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